TRENTON — If there’s one attribute about Hamilton Post 31 through the first two weeks of the Mercer County American Legion League season that’s evident, it’s that it certainly knows how to keep things interesting.

With the exception of a 10-run rule victory over Lawrence Post 414, Hamilton’s other four games — two wins, two losses — could have easily gone either way.

That trend continued Saturday when Post 31 needed extra innings and a four-run top of the ninth to get past Trenton Posts 93/182, 7-3, at Wetzel Field.

“Everything’s been real close so far, and it’s been the pitching that’s kept us in it,” catcher Ryan Scholey said. “Our hitting is going to come around.

“It’s our Achilles heel right now, not being able to drive in runs when we need them.”

Scholey led off the ninth with a single and advanced when Casey Plunkett walked. Ross Colton laid down a sacrifice bunt, but the ball was thrown errantly past first baseman Heriberto Hernandez, allowing pinch runner Shane Keledy to score, Plunkett to advance to third and Colton to cruise into second.

Austin Constantini and Anthony Peroni followed with sacrifice flies, and B.J. Dudeck laced an RBI single to cap the inning.

“Anyway we can get a win, we’re going to take it,” Scholey, who had to rush from the game to attend his grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary, said. “We had to grind this one out, but a win’s a win.”

Chris Geraci went 3⅔ innings of relief, allowing two hits and an unearned run with four strikeouts, to get the win.

“I was just trying to throw strikes and focus on getting the first guy out,” Geraci, who is headed to Philadelphia University in the fall, said.

“If you can do that, you can take away from their momentum. But it all comes down to just throwing strikes.”

Trenton cut the deficit in half on Anthony Reyes’ RBI groundout in the fourth.

Hamilton went back up by two behind Peroni’s RBI single in the fifth, but Trenton cut the deficit to a run when Jayson Roldan scored on a two-out error.

Steven Valdez singled and later scored on Sterling Ayala’s RBI groundout to tie the game at 3-all.

“They played hard, and that’s what we told them after the game,” Trenton manager Doug Moore said.

“We don’t want them to be discouraged, because we honestly feel like we’re two hits and one error away from beating Hightstown, Lawrence and Hamilton.

“We’ve had a costly error in each of those games, and we still had a chance to win all of those games. We just left too many runners in scoring position. I thought they came together as a team and picked each other up when we needed to, and that’s something we’re proud of. “

Eddie Ashley went 0-for-2 and scored three runs for Post 31 but saw his 22-game (16 for Steinert, six to start the season for Post 31) hit streak come to an end.

Contact Kevin Maloney at kevmaloney33@yahoo.com. Follow him on Twitter at kevmaloney33.